While 26 E.U. leaders have indicated that they want Ukraine’s candidacy to move forward, the 27th, Orban, is threatening to block the decision, as well as a critical $50 billion aid package, unless he gets his way — and his money.
Arriving at the summit, Orban said that Hungarians “don’t bow to pressure” and “there are conditions [for Ukraine], they were not met.”
The showdown comes at a critical moment when Ukraine’s battlefield progress has stalled and the country is also fighting to secure $60 billion from the United States, where support for the war appears to be waning.
“Hungary’s Orban seems to be emboldened by the political gridlock over further Ukraine funding in Washington and disappointment with Ukraine’s counteroffensive,” said Alissa de Carbonnel, deputy director of the International Crisis Group’s Europe and Central Asia program, in an email.
“E.U. leaders didn’t expect to be haggling over their big funding package for Ukraine at the eleventh hour.”
Since the decisions require unanimity, E.U. leaders will spend Thursday trying to find a way to secure Hungarian support without completely surrendering to Hungarian demands.
On the eve of the summit, the European Commission announced it was unlocking more than $10 billion for Hungary that it had frozen in a novel effort to get member countries to abide by democratic principles.
The commission said Wednesday that Hungary had now met conditions related to judicial independence. Some insist the timing was coincidence. Others see it as giving in to blackmail.
In an interview with Bloomberg News this week, Orban’s top political adviser suggested that Hungary was, indeed, negotiating — and that unblocking more money could move Hungary to change its tune on Ukraine. Orban, who is Russia’s closest ally in the E.U., has a history of stalling, including on sanctions.
For now, leaders, officials and diplomats appear to be looking for ways to either accommodate Orban, or at least work around him, perhaps by adding additional steps or conditions to Ukraine’s path to membership or finding a way for 26 member states to send aid to Ukraine without Hungary.
“We have to reach some sort of agreement — we don’t have time to procrastinate or push it to the future,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said Thursday.
In a video call to E.U. leaders, Zelensky urged them to act. “This day will go down in our history,” he said, “Whether it’s good or bad for us, history will capture everything. Every word, every step, every action and inaction.”
“It’s very important that Europe doesn’t fall back into indecision today,” he continued. “Nobody wants Europe to be seen as untrustworthy, or as unable to take decisions it prepared itself.”
In recent weeks, Ukrainian officials and diplomats have tried, desperately, to shore up support in both the United States and Europe.
A delegation of senior Ukrainian officials visited Washington this week to plead with lawmakers there for more funding. But they left with little to show for the effort, as Senate Republicans once again blocked the proposed aid package.
Nearly two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, with winter looming and supplies running low, financial support is needed to keep Ukraine running — and fighting — in the short-term, officials said. Progress on E.U. accession is also seen as critical, both for morale and for the message it sends to Russia.
Ukrainian officials stress that Ukraine has worked hard to meet criteria set out by the European Commission, which in November recommended that the E.U. open accession negotiations with Ukraine, as well as Moldova.
On Thursday, Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, laid out Ukraine’s case on X, formerly Twitter, and called out Orban’s antics.
European Council decisions on Ukraine “are a piece of a much bigger puzzle,” she said. “The stakes are too high to have someone play with it.”
A positive decision from the E.U. this week would be a boost for Ukraine, but membership remains a long way off.
Joining the E.U. typically takes many years. The political and legal systems of prospective members are scrutinized and slowly brought into compliance with E.U. rules.
Several countries, including Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia, have been in membership talks for years. Turkey applied to join in 1987 and officially remains a candidate, in theory, despite the fact that its odds look extraordinarily slim.
The fact that Ukraine is still at war makes its case more complicated. In Brussels, there is broad agreement that welcoming Ukraine would send an important signal to Russia, but much division about what welcoming Ukraine and other new members would mean for the E.U.
If Ukraine joined today, it would be the E.U.’s fifth-most-populous nation and its poorest by a wide margin, shifting the group’s balance of power and disrupting its internal market. Many believe key institutions would need to be rethought before Ukraine could join.
